Nowadays, application field of the digital picture processing has been rapidly spread, and such digital picture processing has been put into practical use in actual industrial fields like atomization of inspection by visual observation. On the other hand, the kind of digital picture processing objects has been explodedly increased.
For example, there are picture reading apparatuses in which a flat bed type scanner (hereinafter simply referred to as scanner) as the computer peripheral equipment is used to read, as digital pictures, pictures recorded in frame units on an optical film (hereinafter simply referred to as film) to record the digital pictures thus read onto a recording medium. As a recording medium adapted so that digital pictures are recorded in such picture reading apparatus, e.g., rewritable digital disc using magneto-optical disc (hereinafter simply referred to as disc) is used.
In such picture reading apparatus, pictures of respective frames recorded on the film are first read in succession by the scanner. At this time, user carries out, every frames, in succession, comparison between the remaining capacity of the disc and sizes of pictures of respective frames which have been read by the scanner to issue write instructions, e.g, by key input operation, etc. in dependency upon the comparison result so that pictures of respective frames recorded on the film are recorded in succession on the disc. Moreover, such a picture reading apparatus is adapted to have ability of providing, by laser printer as the computer peripheral equipment, print-out of index information (hereinafter referred to as index print) of the disc on which pictures of respective frames have been recorded in a manner as described above.
However, in a picture reading apparatus as described above, it was required for user to carry out, every time, comparison between the remaining capacity of the disc and sizes of pictures that he desires to record in order to confirm how many number of pictures can be recorded from now on the disc. Since it was necessary to carry out such a very troublesome work, particularly, in the case of reading a large quantity of films at a high speed to carry out recording, or the like, user could not efficiently carry out work.
Moreover, in the case of recording pictures of about 100 frames into the same directory of the disc, such pictures are recorded in succession in order of issuance of write instructions of pictures to be recorded. For this reason, classification of pictures after recording was very difficult. Namely, in such a case, since when an arbitrary picture is taken out from the directory within which pictures of about 100 frames are recorded, it was necessary to carry out retrieval in succession from the picture recorded first, such retrieval operation was very troublesome. Further, since according as the number of recorded pictures becomes greater, the speed of retrieval becomes lower accordingly, the working efficiency became further poor. For example, in the picture reading apparatus adapted for recording pictures onto the photo digital disc, it is possible to record pictures of about 100 frames on a single disc. However, in the case where such picture reading apparatus is used to record, onto the photo compact disc, plural films of which photographing places are entirely different from each other, such as, for example, photographs such as athletic sports, travel, and the like, the work for searching switching point between the films while looking at the index print was required in order to recognize the switching point between the films in the photo compact disc.
In addition, in a picture reading apparatus as described above, when the film is set (loaded) in the state where the inside is turned out with respect to the reading apparatus, pictures on the film would be disposed in the state reversed in regard to upper and lower directions, or in the state reversed in regard to left and right directions with respect to the CCD line sensor for reading pictures. Accordingly, when reading of pictures on the film is carried out by the CCD line sensor in such a state, not only picture images in the state reversed with respect to upper and lower directions or in the state reversed in left and right directions would be displayed on monitor, but also picture images in the state reversed with respect to upper and lower directions or in the state reversed in left and right directions would be recorded on the disc.
This invention has been made in view of actual circumstances as described above, and has objects as described below.
Namely, an object of this invention is to provide a picture reading apparatus adapted for rapidly and securely reading, in succession, pictures of respective frames recorded on an optical film to record those pictures onto a recording medium, and for displaying, on monitor, the number of remaining frames which can be recorded onto the recording medium, thereby making it possible to improve the working efficiency.
Another object of this invention is to provide a picture reading apparatus which has a function to invert (relative position of) pictures with respect to upper and lower directions thereof in accordance with inverting command, thereby making it possible to improve the working efficiency.